Productivity Commission is ignoring everything we know about babies

Lisa Bryant

The Productivity Commission has ignored the fact that babyhood matters and is a vital part of early education. Photo: Glenn Hunt

Babies are pretty useless really. Human ones, that is. Compared with animal counterparts, they just don't rate. It takes a few weeks for our babies to even manage their own heads without assistance. A few more months to sit up unaided. They don't get the whole being a biped thing till they are around one. They can't string a few words together into a sentence for another year after that.

Because they're so helpless, being nurtured in those first few years is pretty important. We know from unintentional experiments in Romanian orphanages that without loving interactions with adults, babies grow but don't exactly thrive. We know from just as shameful experiments in the US caused by the huge income divide that babies from less well-off, stressed out parents don't hear as many words as ones with middle-class parents. This means they speak almost 1000 fewer words than their peers by the time they are three. From another study, Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, we know the effects that bad parenting can have.

However, the Productivity Commission, in their search for answers to Australia's childcare mess, have ignored everything that we know about babies. They seem to have forgotten that 85 per cent of what humans learn (including that walking and talking stuff) happens in these vital first years of life. They have ignored the neuroscience that says unless the architecture of the brain is built right in these first few years, everything that comes later is built on shaky foundations (again – Honey Boo Boo). They have ignored the fact that babyhood matters and is a vital part of early education.

Why would the Productivity Commission do such a thing? Well, money really. And, like, productivity. They were tasked by Treasurer Joe Hockey to work out how to ensure we could get more parents (read mothers) back to work.

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The Productivity Commission has decided that there is not enough evidence that the type of care provided while parents are working matters greatly, as long as children are safe.

Parents know that babies are learning all the time. They see their children develop from blobs to almost functioning human beings. This is why the quality of care and early education they receive in the first five years matter so much. This is why our governments unanimously decided that the ratio of educators to babies in our childcare centres should drop to one educator to four babies. They also decided that educators needed to be more qualified. That some should even be (shock horror) university educated. These reforms were ground-breaking. They recognise that children learn from birth. That we don't just need to care for babies and very young children, but we also need to kick-start their education in the years their brains are hardwired to learn.

The commission acknowledged this in its report when it said: "The cumulative effect of experiences and environment in early childhood makes further skill acquisition possible later in life."

But, unfortunately, providing qualified educators (and more of them) costs money. And the commission has decided that herein lays the problem. Disappointingly, it has come up with just one key solution to ensuring families can access the childcare they need – encouraging investment by making the game more profitable.

Why do we need to remove the need for qualifications to make childcare more profitable? Because of the big childcare secret. That the childcare business is a mug's game. No matter what the Eddy Groves/ABC Learning era led us to believe, it is hard to run a childcare centre and make a profit. According to market analysts, IBISWorld, profit margins in Australia for childcare services are about 2 per cent to 3 per cent. This is just too low to encourage services to meet the huge unmet demand.

The commission figures that changing the focus from learning to care for under three year olds can cut costs and increase profits. Because if all staff are providing is care, they don't need an education either. This recommendation to remove mandatory higher qualifications has been met by childcare experts with horror. Businesses could set up childcare centres that employ only teenagers with a basic certificate they could obtain while at school to prove they could look after children.

The commission has given a small out for some. They have said that centres that wish to retain higher-qualified staff for babies would be able to and "differentially price their services accordingly".

In other words, children from already advantaged families (i.e. those with more money) would get access to the good stuff of early education while already disadvantaged children (those from poorer families) miss out.

Go figure.

Lisa Bryant is a consultant in the early education and care sector and is the NSW convener of Australian Community Children's Services.

33 comments

Well put. Not to mention that every dollar spent on early intervention saves five for the government later. Productivity now, and then some other sector can do another productivity report later in why teachers and social workers aren't meeting the demand. How about we focus on people in all stages holistically.

Commenter

Anti

Location

Canterbury

Date and time

July 29, 2014, 6:56AM

No, not well put. Babyhood matters enormously. All that is true. But how is it that the human race has survived and flourished without parents ever having a university degree in baby care? Because babies do NOT need education. They need love and attention. No university degree can make any human able to provide love and attention to 4 or 5 babies simultaneously. Uni degrees do not allow anyone to grow extra arms.

That is why ratios matter; because a single adult cannot care for 7 babies.

But they should be ratios of loving, decent, well adjusted people, with patience and experience with babies. Not 21 year olds with degrees in early childhood. It is true that child care is expensive because it is very costly to replicate normal baby care ie one mother to one baby and possible a few older kids. It is also expensive because care matters. It is an incredibly valuable service that should be well-renumerated. University degrees are largely irrelevant.

Commenter

Cathy

Date and time

July 29, 2014, 3:56PM

So Lisa we can just leave the system as is and have it unaffordable for the disadvantaged?Surely some care is better than none?

Commenter

ADP

Date and time

July 29, 2014, 7:08AM

The need for taxpayer subsidized childcare would not be needed if one parent could actually afford to stay home and look after there own young children. Unfortunately the government has implemented policies that have made housing so expensive that is simply not possible for the vast majority of people. The government claims to believe in the free market but with negative gearing, which operates differently from other forms of investment they have distorted the investment market causing house prices to be much higher than they would be in a true free market.

Commenter

Tony McIntyre

Location

Lower Mitcham SA

Date and time

July 29, 2014, 7:53AM

Tony, I hear what you’re saying. It’s great to have one stay at home parent. But this is a different issue altogether. This is about quality education and care for young children and babies. In my opinion there is little difference between and uneducated stay-at-home parent and an uneducated day-care employee. I wouldn’t want my child cared for by either. Harsh… maybe. But my preference will always be for someone with a university degree. That’s what this is about – the availability and equal access to qualified carers and educators to look after your children when you return to work.

Commenter

Sunny

Location

Sydney

Date and time

July 29, 2014, 12:12PM

You are 100% correct. This comment recognises reality- that it is only the "wealthy" parents who can afford to have 1 parent stay at home.

Commenter

Sydney Full Time Mother

Date and time

July 29, 2014, 1:07PM

You're utterly wrong. The only government policy having an effect on house prices is land relases and height restrictions. Both of these limit supply to the market.

Negative gearing is not solely isolated to property investment. You can get it on a share portfolio if you have a margin scheme. Moreover, negative gearing keeps rents to below repayment costs because investors know they can offset expenses against all their income. Considering every Australian is taxed on every dollar they earn around the world then it makes sense that they can deduct every dollar incurred in earnign that income. Where the expenses of investing in property exceeds the income from that property you offset the costs against other income. The same applies to any form of investing or any costs incurred in earning income.

House prices are high because where women have entered the workforce over the last 50 years couples have poured that second income into bigger and better houses with more and more gadgets to fill them. Where once a 3br fibro house with one car and one TV was the norm it has now become 4-5 bedroom houses with 3 cars, 3 TVs, a computer, a pool etc. The income women earned should have been put into investments and they should have continued to live off the man's income....

As for childcare being a public expense; it shouldn't. It should be entirely private as it's a personal choice to have children. With 7billion people on the planet we don't need to grow our own. We can import labour as needed. Breeding should only be for those that can afford it. We'll all be better off.

Commenter

Bender

Date and time

July 29, 2014, 1:50PM

@ Sydney Full Time Mother – completely basing my response on my own social, family and work environments, I completely disagree. I’ve found the lower the household income, the more likely one parent will stay home. Especially when the income of the lesser earning parent is less than the cost of day care, travel to and from work etc. The ones with higher incomes tend to be able to afford care more easily and often return to work earlier.

Commenter

Sunny

Date and time

July 29, 2014, 2:58PM

You are right. It is the dire shortage of housing in Sydney that has put up prices to the extent that most families cannot afford to either rent or buy if one parent stays at home to care for children.

Commenter

Eva

Date and time

July 29, 2014, 3:09PM

Housing is expensive because of the increase in household revenue brought about by the rise of the dual income household and the fall of the stay at home parent. Plus population growth.